25A klaxon 🚨

📣To mark the 14-year anniversary since the Government stripped migrant domestic workers of their essential rights, we stood proudly outside Parliament to demand rights, protection and justice.

🪧 Join our call for the Government to overhaul the current visa and implement one that reinstates rights!

Don’t threaten us with a good time, David

Updating my protest calendar I was reminded that here (France) V-E day is a bank holiday, for understandable reasons, but isn’t in GB, for less understandable reasons. Does anyone have an explanation why? I know I could google but sometimes those posts yield great answers

As the granddaughter of WW2 veterans, this is insulting. But most importantly it’s also entirely false. Tehran isn’t Berlin, it’s not even Dresden. The US is very much the aggressor here, for reasons that triggered WW2 to begin with.

Basic high school knowledge.

If you can, go outside.

My neighbour across the street has covered his driveway with hydrangea. I like looking at it; if I look up from my laptop, I see a wave of light purple floating in the breeze. This is The Outside. If there is ICE outside, then we need to organise. Outside belongs to us.

Remind yourself there are things worth fighting for. Be the person that will comfort someone, even if you don’t know them. We all have the potential to be the helper - to each their skill, to each their ability. It doesn’t cost a dime. It isn’t even a time commitment. It’s about being.

Compartmentalisation works, but it isn’t necessarily healthy especially in the long term. This isn’t a job, especially in IHL / LOAC, where you can sleepwalk your way through the work day. No matter how much you wish you could. My cat saw me through, but please go outside.

I can’t tell them they’re wrong. Once a merchant of hope, I, and many others, are constantly flirting with the cliff edge of abandoning everything we held close, because it was being turned into rubble, sometimes literally. I can’t stress this enough: we see way more than an educated public sees.

A few colleagues I know have left the law. They felt like they had reached the limit of what they could do. With institutions crumbling, and the rule of law trampled on a daily basis, they felt useless, voiceless, part of the problem. This is something we need to collectively address.

Overwhelmed by the footage coming out of Lebanon, where I have family (that thankfully managed to somehow make it out of Beirut), I went outside today. It was a warm spring day. I sat down at a cafe. I stared out the window. People wished me a good rest of my day. Someone held the door for me.

You may think this is cringe but I believe we have lost the sense of being with each other. Fascism and authoritarianism are ideologies of isolation, hyper-individualism, and division. Strong, interconnected communities are the response. We can’t foster them, let alone create them, in isolation.

Go outside. Interact with your neighbours. Have a coffee. Help someone cross the street if they need help. Smile at someone who looks a little wobbly on a train platform. Walk up to someone crying. Wave at a child. Those are very small things you can do that will, I guarantee you, help immensely.

In the north of Ireland, but abroad as well, we are often held hostage by a loud and forceful minority, that manages to scare the rest of us by making us doubt each other. This is what surveillance states do - they weaponise ordinary people. But this isn’t east Germany.

So what did I learn? That most people are sound. That most people want to live, not survive, and coexist with their friends, neighbours, in a quiet and uneventful society. Of course, the events are often out of our control. But that doesn’t mean they’re endorsed by a majority.

I stopped at a shop to grab something refreshing to drink. The woman at the till, whom I had never seen before, leaned in and said “are you okay, love?” And I felt so overwhelmed. “I hope you’re okay. This isn’t okay what’s happening. I hope you know that.” I had lost sight of that.

And before you claim privilege, I’m biracial and known for being loud about my politics.

I went outside. I walked around. Around the greenway, I saw an older gentleman stopping by Orangefield Park and hugging a tree. Just doing that. Hugging a tree. And then he went on his way. I walked around aimlessly. People said hello, nodded, smiled. The tension was in the air, not in people.

At some point, I had to go outside. I just had to. Because of everything I heard and saw and attempted to handle (with relative success, and sometimes abject failure), it felt like nowhere and nothing was safe. And I live(d) in a neighbourhood known for that kind of antics.

My pro tip is this: go outside. I don’t mean this in a “go touch grass” jaded / cynical way. I’m advising to literally go outside if you can. I realised this working round the clock long past the point of burnout during the Belfast riots in 2024. Glued to my phone and to my computer, I was spinning.

One thing a lot of (younger but not just) people ask me on a regular basis, besides “what’s a war crime”, is how not to fall into a black hole of despair. I struggle with it myself and I think we all do, especially in the profession, being exposed to the worst of the worst, worse than press coverage

French prosecutors summon Elon Musk over alleged child abuse images on X Owner of X summoned along with former CEO Linda Yaccarino over investigation by cybercrime unit

As the investigation into Grok and its exploitation of child sex abuse continues, French prosecutors have now summoned - instead of wanting for questioning - Elon Musk. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

thinking of the pride and full nights of sleep on the part of, for example, the surviving family members of those the US murdered in wedding drone strikes at his direction

Only since 2024, and we all screamed about it

Public Opinion, Credible Threats, and the Fezzik Principle History (and The Princess Bride) shows how to bring the Supreme Court into line with the American people.

The dramatic drop in public approval for the Supreme Court is a major issue for the institution, whose legitimacy depends on the public’s willingness to submit to its rulings. Jesse Wegman details what to do about it (with a little help from The Princess Bride): bit.ly/3OkW9jo

Asked if she understood why many trans people felt Rowling's approach had become cruel and dehumanising, and contributed to them feeling unwelcome and unaccepted, Dugdale said: “I understand that and I've also heard JK Rowling and other people who hold a different position on these issues to me describe with a similar rawness how they've experienced being opposed for their views. And I just think, the days of these culture wars, about sitting in polar extremes from each other, should be behind us now." She added: "When you look at our renewed strategy, it is about navigating this turbulence; it's about listening, it is about engaging.

Asked about JK Rowling's opposition to trans rights, Dugdale said: "I have a huge respect for JK Rowling. I've had the pleasure of meeting her before and I think her story and how she came to be this prolific, incredible children's writer in this city as a single mum writing in a cafe is phenomenal and an inspiration to so many women across the world. "I think she's been a really powerful political advocate [for] improving the lot of single mums, making a case for tackling poverty and inequality in all its forms, and there is absolutely a place for her in public life to share her experiences and tell her story and make a difference." She called for "a bit of kindness, a bit of generosity of spirit, a willingness to get into the grey area to talk about these things calmly. To try and find common ground is the only path through this and it's one that I'm committed to."

If your starting point is that the lives and rights of trans and non-binary individuals are up for debate, and those seeking to erase them deserve to be listened to, then I would argue that you aren't actually as concerned about a rollback of rights as you claim.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

In response, in terms of strategic geopolitics, I suggest an EU blockade of the US blockade for the purposes of accessing the Iran blockade and address the possible deblockading that will ease passage through the other blockades. Adding a land blockade could add to mutual blockade deterrence

Agreed! And I’m just baffled by the lack of reaction to Iran considering how unpopular it seems to be. This could be an easy swing for Democrats if they sought to clean up their approval ratings

Good morning to the 25th Amendment and the 25th Amendment only